Off Newport (Concl.)

Three years ago the America's Cup yacht races off Newport ended with much public confusion over the various fouls, protests and rulings and British Skipper Thomas Octave Murdoch Sopwith swore he would never race U. S. Skipper Harold Stirling Vanderbilt again. Last week's concluding pair of the four successive British defeats in the 1937 America's Cup series found all hands publicly cheering each other but Skipper Sopwith a little groggy from the spectacular quality of his beating.

After losing the first two races by 17 min. 5 sec. and 18 min. 32 sec. respectively. Skipper Sopwith spent $150 to have Endeavour II hauled out of the water at Bristol. Maybe, he thought, a lobster pot had fouled her hull. Ranger's skipper did likewise. But no lobster pot was holding Endeavour back. Her sea-hardened paint was smooth, her hull sleek. Ranger's newer paint, however, was spotted, and her hull had to be daubed and cemented. Back at sea, Ranger proceeded to give Endeavour a further view of her stern, although Skipper Vanderbilt won the next two races by less embarrassing margins: 4 min. 27 sec. and 3 min. 37 sec. Nevertheless, Ranger set new America's Cup records by sailing the fastest 15-mile windward leg in 2 hr. 3 min. 55 sec. in the third race, and the fastest triangular 30 miles in 3 hr. 7 min. 49 sec. in the last one.

In 1934 Skipper Sopwith won the first two races before losing the series to Skipper Vanderbilt's Rainbow. The historic one-sidedness of this year's series caused the more irreverent members of the daily sporting press to surpass themselves in humorous abuse at the loser's expense. In the opinion of Joe Williams of the New York World-Telegram: "Sopwith is a palooka back of the wheel." "Sopwith," observed Jack Miley in the New York Daily News, "is now only three challenges and a goatee behind the late Sir Thomas Lipton."

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